SYDNEY, May 11: From the rice paddies of Asia to the wheat fields of Australia, the soaring price of food is breaking the budgets of the poor and raising the spectres of hunger and unrest, experts warn.
A billion people in Asia are seriously affected by the surging costs of daily staples such as rice and bread, the director-general of the Asian Development Bank, Rajat Nag, has said.
“This includes roughly about 600 million people who live on just under a dollar a day, which is the definition of poverty, and another 400 million who are just above that borderline,” he said.
Globally, the World Bank last month estimated that 33 countries were threatened with political and social unrest because of the skyrocketing costs of food and energy.
Across Asia, workers made a campaign against high food prices their May Day battle cry in marches through cities, including the capitals of Indonesia, the Philippines and Thailand.
While the demonstrations were mainly peaceful, concern is growing over the potential for political instability and unrest if high prices persist.
“Once people get hungry they start also getting quite desperate and take desperate measures,” Damien Kingsbury of Australia’s Deakin University told AFP.
Experts blame the high food prices on a confluence of factors, including increased demand from a changing diet in Asia, droughts, the rising use of crops for biofuels, and growing energy and fertiliser costs.
In Australia, which usually ranks second after the United States as a global wheat exporter, several years of drought cut harvests to just 13 million tons last year from an average of 22 million tons.
So while consumers are struggling, Australian farmers are not getting rich on the backs of the poor, said National Farmers Federation chief executive Ben Fargher.
“It’s been the worst drought in our history and many, many farming families are under significant financial and emotional stress and it will take our communities a long time to recover,” he said.
And even in a relatively prosperous country like Australia, people are feeling the squeeze in the supermarkets, prompting the government to launch an inquiry into how to stem rising grocery prices.
Around the rest of the region, the impact varies from traumatic to minimal:
Afghanistan: Millions of Afghans are finding it “problematic” to meet their basic food needs with prices of the staple wheat doubling in some areas over recent months, the World Food Programme has said.
Bangladesh: One of the world’s poorest nations, Bangladesh has been hit by a doubling in the price of the main staple, rice, in the past year and many low-paid workers say they have been forced to make do on only one meal a day.
Last month about 20,000 garment workers rioted near Dhaka for higher wages to cover food prices.
China: Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao told a meeting of the State Council last month that high prices were the biggest problem in the domestic economy.
“The inflation is led by food price rises, which especially hurt the poor,”said Ma Qing, a Beijing-based analyst.
India: A general strike against spiralling food prices paralysed Kolkata on April 21 as thousands of policemen were deployed across the West Bengal state to stop protests turning violent.
New Delhi has already slashed food duties and banned exports of lentils and other staples, and will not hesitate to further “sacrifice revenues to control prices,” Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram said.
Indonesia: Anger over rising food prices was a focus for some 10,000 Indonesians who took to the streets of Jakarta for Labour Day rallies.
Japan: In resource-poor Japan, which relies on imports for 60 per cent of its food, companies have hiked prices on everything from beer to beef, mayonnaise and “miso” paste made from fermented soybeans in recent months.
Malaysia: Resentment over rising prices was a major factor in March elections which saw the ruling coalition lose a third of parliamentary seats and five states in its worst results in half a century.
Nepal: Nepal last week banned the export of grains as prices soared.
“There is a high possibility of food crisis in a poor country like ours where domestic production is not enough,” said Hari Dahal, a spokesman at the ministry of agriculture.
North Korea: North Korea’s food crisis has already seen some people starve to death in remote rural towns, according to an aid group which works in the impoverished communist nation, South Korea’s Good Friends organisation.
Pakistan: Analysts say public anger over food shortages, particularly wheat flour, was a factor in the defeat of President Pervez Musharraf’s allies in the February elections.
Singapore: Singapore is the wealthiest economy in Southeast Asia but charities say inflation is driving more people to join queues for free meals. Consumer price inflation reached 6.6 per cent in January-February, officials said.
Thailand: Export and domestic rice prices have risen about 50 per cent in a month. Some farmers have taken to arming themselves and staking out their fields at night to protect their precious crop from rice thieves.
In a phrase particularly chilling for Asia, the World Food Programme has described rising food prices as a “silent tsunami”.—AFP
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